My reply added to their sorrow.
"I should say, 'Begorra, Yer Honour, it's a bully good story!'"
The judgment of my brethren was that there was good stuff in me for a Christian if I had only been born somewhere else, a judgment I could not be expected to agree with. My disagreement with these men on various lines was no barrier to my participation in their propaganda. There was only one thing in the world to do—get men converted. Each man in this small group picked out another man as a subject of prayer and solicitation and persuasion. At our weekly meetings we reported on our work. Then we worked for each other. Of course, I was a subject of prayer myself. When these men shook hands in parting, they usually said, "If the Lord tarry," for the Lord was expected to come at any moment. This they could not get into my speech or mind. As I looked around me, I got the idea that there was a good deal of work to be done before the Lord came, and I put emphasis rather on the work than on the expectation. The ship was a beehive of activity, not merely the activity of warlike discipline or preparation, but social activity. Of course, this activity was largely for the officers. We had to go ashore for most of ours, and the social activity of the rank and file was rather of a questionable character ashore, but the officers had their dinners, their dances, and their afternoon receptions.
The social centre for a portion of the rank and file was a sailors' institute. As this was a temperance institution, it was only patronized by a small percentage of them. Here we had frequent receptions, afternoon teas, lectures, and religious meetings. Here the secret societies met—the Free Masons, Odd Fellows, Foresters, Orangemen, etc. Thursday afternoons we had a half-holiday on board. It was called "Make-and-Mend-Clothes Day." The upper decks belonged to the crew that afternoon, and every conceivable kind of activity was in operation. It looked something like an Irish fair. It was a day on which most men wrote home; but there were sewing, boxing, fencing, and on this afternoon at least almost every man on the ship worked at his hobby. My hobby at this time was mathematics and I could not do that in the crowd, but on Thursday afternoons I rather enjoyed watching the boxing and fencing. My experience in the game had given me at least a permanent interest in it, and as I stood by the ropes the blood tingled in my veins. I was anxious many a time for a rough and tumble, but my religious friends saved me from this indulgence. There were sixteen men in my mess. It was in a corner of the main gun battery alongside one of the big "stern-chasers." We had a table that could be lowered from the roof of the gun battery, and eating three times a day with these men, I knew them fairly well and they knew me. Each man-of-war's man is allowed a daily portion of rum, and I was advised by the small group of Christians to follow their example and refuse to permit anybody else to drink my portion. It took me a long time to make up my mind to follow their advice. It was, of course, considered an old-womanish thing to do, but I finally came to the point when I asked the commissariat department to give me, as was the custom, tea, coffee, and sugar instead. I took very good care, however, not to indulge myself in these things. I handed them over to men on the night watches. This did not save me from the penalty for such an offence. It brought down on my head the curses of a good many men in the mess, but especially of one man who was a sort of a ship's bruiser. It came his turn to be cook about once in ten days. The cook of the mess had as his perquisite a little of each man's ration of rum. With the others, the abuse was mixed with good-humour, for on the whole I managed to lead a fairly agreeable life with my messmates. They looked upon me as a religious fanatic, but my laughter, my funny stories, and my willingness to oblige offset with most of them my temperance principles and religious fanaticism. The insults of the bruiser I usually met with a smile and passed off with a joke; but when they were long continued, they irritated me.
There is a monotony in the life of the average soldier or sailor which has a very deadening effect upon character—seeing the same faces, hearing the same things, performing the same routine in the same kind of way every day, year in and year out, makes him a sort of automaton. Kipling has told us something of the effect of this thing in "Soldiers Three." There came a time when I broke under the strain of this man's continued insults. For nearly a year I got comfort from the advice of the brethren. We had a weekly meeting where our difficulties were considered and prayed over, but the consolation of my brethren finally refused to suffice, and, being a healthy, normal, vigorous animal with some little experience of looking after myself, I began to resent the insults and make some show of defence. This change of front incensed the bully, and one day he hurled an exceedingly nasty epithet at me—one of those vulgar but usual epithets current in army speech. The reference in it to my mother stirred me with indignation and I announced in a fit of anger my willingness to be thrashed or thrash him if the thing was repeated. It was not only repeated at once, but seizing a lump of dough, he hurled it at my head. I ducked my head and it hit another man on the jaw, but the gauntlet was on the floor and an hour afterward the port side of the gun deck was a mass of solidly packed sailors and marines. My brethren came to me one after another. They quoted scores of texts to make me uncomfortable. I tried to joke, but my lips were parched and my tongue unwilling to act. I was pale and trembling. I knew what I was up against, but determined to see it through. One text only I could remember in this exigency and I quoted it to Lanky Lawrence, the big sailmaker who was the leader of our sect. "Lanky, m' boy," I said to him, "I'm goin' to hing m' hat on one text fur the space of a good thrashin'."
"What is it?" asked the sailmaker.
"'As much as lieth in ye, live peaceably wid all men.' Now I have done that same, and bedad, I have done it to the limit and I'm goin' to jump into this physical continshun so that of out it I will bring pace!"
"Ye're all wrong!" said the sailmaker.
"I know it, but from the straight-lacedness of your theology I want a vacation, Lanky, just for the space that it takes to get a lickin' wan way or th' other." So the thing began. My chief endeavour was to escape punishment, but the space was exceedingly small between the two big guns and I didn't succeed very well. During the first five minutes I was very badly bruised and beaten. One of my ribs was broken and both eyes almost closed. Half the time I could not see the bully at all. In one of the breathing spells, the sailmaker, who, despite his quotations of Scripture, had remained to see the proceedings, whispered something in my ear. It was a point of advice. He told me that if I could stand that five minutes longer, my opponent would be outclassed. The support of Lanky was a great encouragement to me, and a good deal of my fear disappeared. I began to think harder, to plan, and to plant blows as well as to avoid them. This excited the crowd and it became frenzied.
Up to that point it was a one-sided thing. Now, I was not only taking but giving; and not only giving, but giving with laughter and ejaculations. Our Bible study for that month was the memorizing of the names of the minor prophets; and once when I managed to toss my opponent's head to one side with a blow on the point of the chin, I shouted full of glee, "Take that, you cross-eyed son of a seacook—take it in the name of Hosea!" The crowd laughed, but above the roar of laughter rang out the voice of a Scotchman who was one of our best Bible students: "Gie him brimstone, Sandy!" A few minutes later I ejaculated, "And, bedad, that's for Joel!" In this new spirit and in this jocular way, I pounded the twelve minor prophets into him one after another, while the rafters of the ship rang with the cheers of the crew. By the time I had exhausted the minor prophets, I was much the stronger man of the two. My opponent was wobbling around in pretty bad shape. Once he was on his knees, and while waiting, I shouted, "I want to be yer friend, Billy Creedan. Shake hands now, you idiot, and behave yourself!"